The first week
It starts with the ranking check, so by the time we talk we already know where your clinic shows for eight searches, who sits above you, and what your profile and website are missing. The written plan for the first 90 days comes from that. You read it, we change what you want changed, and you get the monthly fee in writing on the same page.
Then two pieces of access. You add us as a manager on your Google Business Profile from your own Google account; you stay the owner, managers cannot add or remove users or delete the profile, and you can remove us whenever you like. And you give us a login to your website, or an introduction to whoever hosts it. If your site is built by a company that will not give access, we write the changes up for them to make. That is all. We do not need your patient management system, your email list or your scheduling software, and we would decline them if offered.
In the same week we fix what is plainly wrong and needs no approval: the profile's hours, the old phone number, the address a directory still has from before your move, the 3 MB hero image. You get an email listing each change the day it is made.
What you approve
Every sentence a patient could read as clinical advice goes to your licensed provider before it is published: what a diagnostic evaluation includes, what real-ear measurement is for, when earwax should be removed by a professional, what the FDA says OTC hearing aids are and are not for, the nine signs that mean a person should see an ENT. We write the first draft from published sources and from what your provider tells us; the provider changes anything they would not say in the booth. Google holds health pages to a high standard of accuracy, and so does your licensing board.
You also approve the profile description, the list of services and their descriptions, any price or trial-period statement, and every reply we draft to a review. Approval is by email; a reply that says "fine" is enough. Budget about 30 minutes a month of the provider's time after the first two months.
The first three months
The first month is the profile and the technical floor: primary category and secondaries, every service listed with a description, customer-facing hours set the way Google asks, a practitioner listing for the audiologist, 12 or more real photos, the appointment link, consistent name, address and phone number everywhere we can find them, structured data on the site, tracking scripts removed from appointment, condition and test pages, and the biggest speed problems fixed. The report at day 30 shows the audiogram again, plotted from the same eight searches on the same device from the same place.
The second month is pages. One page for each service you offer, in plain language, around the questions your front desk hears, with the provider's name on it. The order follows the ranking check: the services where nobody in your town has a real page come first, because they are where a new page has the best chance, and the "hearing aids [town]" page comes last, because it takes the longest to move.
From the third month the work is steady. One review request, the same for every patient, sent by your own system the day after the visit, with no incentive and no sorting of happy from unhappy. Replies to every review within a week, drafted by us, approved by you, confirming nothing about anyone's care. One article a month on a question patients ask. The profile checked for category changes, new attributes and new photos. Technical issues as they come up. And the report: one page, same layout every month, so you can see what moved.
The report plots the same eight searches as the check, with the taps to call, direction requests and website clicks from your profile's own performance counts (Google counts taps, not calls, so we say taps), a list of the work done with links, and the plan for next month.
Hearing Industries Association private-sector unit data for 2011 to 2019, as analyzed by Hearing Review, March 18, 2021. We plan the publishing calendar around it: the repair, cleaning and "is my hearing getting worse" pages go live before January, so they are indexed by March.
The fee
One flat monthly fee, quoted in writing after the free check, before any work starts. It does not move with your call volume, your new patients or your sales, and there is no percentage, no per-lead fee and no per-patient fee. Cancel with 30 days' notice. Everything we build stays in your name: the profile, the site, the pages, the photos.
We won't work for two competing practices in one town; the questions page says what counts as competing. If we can't take on your town, we tell you straight away.
The agreement, on one page
- The work and the fee. The monthly work and the flat fee quoted after the check. No setup fee, no percentage, no per-lead or per-patient charge.
- Approval. Your provider approves every page, the profile description, any price or trial-period statement, and every review reply, by email, before it goes live.
- Access. Manager access to your Google Business Profile and a login to your website. No access to your patient system, patient records or patient lists.
- Business associate agreement. If your website stores appointment requests and the work needs access to them, we sign one first; otherwise we work without access.
- Ownership. The profile, website, pages, photos and accounts stay in your name.
- Ending it. Either side, 30 days' notice, no minimum term. You remove our access; nothing needs handing back.
- Your town. While we work for you, we don't work for a competing practice in your town.
The rules we work under
A hearing clinic that bills insurance electronically is a HIPAA covered entity. Using patient information for marketing needs each patient's written authorization (45 CFR 164.508(a)(3)), while HHS's guidance treats a message about the clinic's own services as outside "marketing". Whether a patient message counts as marketing can turn on who pays for it. We take no patient lists; review requests go from your own system, in your name, sent by your staff. A reply to a public review thanks the reviewer and says nothing about whether they were a patient or what was done. HHS has settled at least twice over review replies that disclosed patient information: with a New Jersey provider for $30,000 in June 2023 and with a Dallas dental practice for $10,000 in 2019. Photos of identifiable patients are identifiers under the rule, so we use none.
On tracking: a federal court in June 2024 vacated the part of HHS's online tracking guidance that treated an IP address plus a visit to a condition page as protected information, and HHS withdrew its appeal that August; its page still says it is evaluating next steps. What still stands is that a tracking script on an authenticated portal, or on an unauthenticated booking page where a visitor types a reason for the visit, sends protected information to the vendor, who then needs a business associate agreement, and that a cookie banner is not a HIPAA authorization. We take advertising pixels and session recorders off every appointment, condition and test page and keep cookieless page counts. If your site stores appointment requests, we either work without access to them or sign a business associate agreement first.
Google's review policy bars incentives of any kind for reviews and bars asking only satisfied customers; the FTC's rule at 16 CFR Part 465, in force since October 21, 2024, bars fake reviews, bought reviews with a required sentiment and the suppression of honest ones. Our review routine is written to both: everyone is asked the same way, nobody is paid, and nothing is hidden.
State advertising rules reach the pages too. Texas Occupations Code 402.103(c) defines deceptive advertising for a hearing instrument fitter and dispenser, including advertising a discounted price without the product and its usual price, listing several instruments without a price for each, and calling an instrument "new" twelve months after it reached the state; 402.401 sets a 30-day trial period by rule; and TDLR's penalty schedule puts deceptive advertising at $1,000 to $5,000. Florida 484.0512 requires written notice of a 30-day trial and money-back guarantee, 484.051 puts the "will not restore normal hearing" disclaimer on the receipt, and rule 64B6-7.004 treats a discount advertised without the usual price as misleading. California's 16 CCR 1399.127 requires the name and license number of every dispenser in every advertisement and bars a hearing-test offer that does not say the test is for selling a hearing aid. Texas chapter 402 and Florida chapter 484 part II are dispenser law; audiologists are licensed under separate rules (in Florida, chapter 468 part I). We draft to the strictest rule we know and flag anything state-specific for you to check with your audiology or hearing instrument board; your provider decides against your state's rules.
What we need from you
Manager access to the Google Business Profile. A login to the website or an introduction to its host. About 30 minutes a month from the provider for approvals, more in the first two months. Real photographs of the clinic, which we will tell you how to take with a phone. And a straight answer when something we propose is not how your clinic actually works, because the pages have to be true.
What we do not do
Ads of any kind, including Local Services Ads (we will tell you what to expect if you run them yourself). Social media. Web design beyond what search needs; if your site needs rebuilding we say so and you choose who does it. Anything that touches patient records. Outcome claims, brand comparisons, "best in town", or any guarantee of a ranking. Clinics owned by a manufacturer, a chain or a buying group that runs their marketing. Two competing practices in the same town.